With Ubuntu 9.04 being released yesterday, I am going to show you how to get prepared to upgrade your 8.10 install.

Before you upgrade:

Backup your data – Please, please, please backup all of your data in case something happens that the upgrade doesn’t happen as it’s supposed to. Don’t blame me if you loose something because you have been warned!

Apply all current updates – Before you upgrade you need to apply all of the updates for your current version. There are two ways to do this, either through the update manager located in System > Administration > Update Manager or via the command line by running the following two lines:

sudo aptitude updatesudo aptitude safe-upgrade

Read the release notes and the known issues – Prior to upgrading you should read the release notes and known issues to be aware of any potential problems that you may have.

Once you have finished applying all of the updates for your current version, you are now ready to upgrade from Ubuntu 8.10 to Ubuntu 9.04.

To begin the upgrade process you will need to press the Alt + F2 keys at the same time. This will bring up the run application dialog. In the Run Application dialog enter ‘update-manager -d‘ and click Run.

This will bring up the Update Manager. (Note: you may need to click “Check” for the new distribution to show as available) The Update Manager will say “New distribution release ‘9.04’ is available.” Click Upgrade to begin the process.

Next you will see the Release Notes. Be sure to read through them and then click Upgrade. At this point Ubuntu will download the Upgrade Tool which will help you through the upgrade process. If you are using third party sources the Upgrade Tool will disable them. Once that is downloaded, the upgrade process will begin automatically.

The Upgrade Tool will first setup new software channels. You will then see a dialog that will tell you what will be upgraded, approximatly how long it will take to download the upgrade and give you the choice to Cancel or Start the upgrade. Click on Start Upgrade when you are ready to begin.

Your system will now download and install the new packages. After the installation is complete you will be presented with the option to Remove Obsolete Packages. Confirm that you want to remove them by clicking Remove otherwise click Keep. The upgrade process will then run a cleanup and ask you to reboot the system. Click Restart Now.

Congratulations! At this point your upgrade is complete! If you want to confirm that you have been upgraded, open up terminal and run: